Polish PM: Iraq nation-building 'failed'
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-02 15:33

Poland's prime minister said Monday that postwar nation-building efforts in Iraq have "failed totally," but expressed hope that the country's different religious groups can work together to build an independent nation, reported Associated Press.

Prime Minister Marek Belka, whose country has been a close U.S. ally since the invasion of Iraq, said the United States and its allies made a mistake by basing its postwar plan for Iraq on the same model used for Germany after World War II.

"It failed totally," Belka said at a panel discussion on nation-building at an international forum in Sweden. "Many mistakes, major mistakes, have been committed."

Poland has commanded a multinational force in Iraq since September 2003, although the force's size has shrunk from 9,500 troops to 4,000.

Belka said there were nonetheless reasons for optimism in Iraq, including the success of recent elections.

"The political process is moving on," Belka said.

However, the key for creating an independent nation in Iraq is to "reconcile the divergent interests" of the country's three major groups, the Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, Belka said.

"There is much more of an Iraqi identity (among the groups) than you might think," he said.

Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who also participated in the discussion, said President Bush has put in risk "the peace of the greater Middle East with this venture."

Talbott, who served in the State Department in the Clinton administration, urged the United States and Great Britain to retain their troops in Iraq to provide sufficient security until the country's armed forces are able to defend against insurgents by themselves.

But he added that next year's midterm elections in the U.S. may lead to a premature withdrawal of the troops in Iraq.

"My concern is that American domestic politics are gonna kick in on this issue next year, with midterm elections 2006," Talbott said, "and that President Bush is going to redefine what 'staying the course' means, in a way that allows him to increasingly draw down at a schedule that does not begin to leave time for the Iraqi forces to be able to provide security for that country."